She began to kind of shrivel and evaporate, slithering off the bed and morphing into someone that looked like a male human with glasses.

I stayed in the bed and looked around the room. There was a computer desk with a PC, and a big screen TV on a far wall. It was a typical bedroom otherwise.

Examining the nightstand I noticed a purple piece of paper on it. It had some printed typewritten writing with blanks to fill in, and looked like some kind of homework assignment. But there was writing in black ink in the spare room on the paper that was various scrawled iterations of the words "DUCK" and "DICK", filling the page.

me: (pointing to paper) "Argh, this "dick" thing. Not a good word to be in one's name. Charles Dickens was lucky to live before automated filtering. Me... not so lucky. What is this paper about, is someone having to channel to get a word past a filter?"

glasses guy: "To be honest, I don't know what that is all about; I'll let you interpret it."

I stood up and went to the walls and knocked on them as a solidity check.

me: "This is... really solid. Unusually so. Why? "Divergent air gravity" or some other rationale that would evade any understanding in where I am from?"

me: "Best guess, of late? A pre-upload Earth. At least they believe it's pre-upload. The deal is it's a planet going around a star, star emits heat, gravity keeps it in a circular orbit. That sort of thing. You have that here?"

glasses guy: "No, we don't have that here. Though I did hear not too long on ago that they had found one of those still running somewhere--it was on the news. But you simply couldn't be here if that's where you are from; it wouldn't be possible."

The guy transformed back into the girl and rejoined me on the bed. She looked into my eyes.

Note
I do not remember the numbers actually. She did advance the recitations in units of three, however, and I'm pretty sure the second and third numbers in the first set of three were the same. I'll just make up the rest here, to give the sense of the interaction.

girl: "Four-five-five, four-eight-six"

me: "Four-five-five... um, again?"

girl: "Four-five-five, four-eight-six"

me: "Four-five-five, four-eight-six"

girl: "Four-five-five, four-eight-six"

me: "Four-five-five, four-eight-six"

girl: "Four-five-five, four-eight-six, seven-two-seven..."

me: (frustrated) "Okay, I'm sorry. You're at nine digits now, which is already pushing what I can remember when I'm awake. How long is this number going to be--a cryptographic hash? Forget about it. Is it supposed to be a way to reach back at you after I wake up?"

girl: "Yes."

me: "The only thing I would know to do with a digit sequence if I could remember it would be a phone number. And I'll bet you it wouldn't call anything useful. But since you can morph your body, and think of Earth-going-around-the-Sun as a distant memory, perhaps it's better to reach from the outside-in? How about websites, do you have those? Domain name system? Dot coms and dot orgs? GoDaddy? Does any of this sound familiar?"

girl: "We have the domain name system, dot coms, that kind of thing. Yes."

me: (excited) "Okay, well that might be easier. Can I use your computer?"

I got up from the bed and went to the keyboard. The environment was still remarkably stable and I could type well. I tried to enter realityhandbook.org into a browser, but there was a kind of auto-correct in effect that kept changing what I typed.

I tried again and again; feeling confident I'd hit the correct keys but getting odd things back. Instead of realityhandbook.org I got reboldog, which jumped to a site asking me what kind of dog I had, or what kind of dog I wanted.

me: "Argh. Rebol dog? What's that supposed to mean. It's a programming language I use; in fact it's used to make realityhandbook.org."

The girl had turned back into the glasses guy again, and was playing something loud on the large wall-mounted television.

me: "The TV is distracting; and I think maybe you should look into your browser and why it's doing so much guessing... going to the wrong places. I don't recognize this OS; try installing something more like, uh, Linux. Well without preloaded filters or guesses, something built from source."

Currently I am experimenting with using Disqus for comments, however it is configured that you don't have to log in or tie it to an account. Simply check the "I'd rather post as a guest" button after clicking in the spot to type in a name.

The accounts written here are as true as I can manage. While the
words are my own, they are not independent creative works of fiction
—in any intentional way. Thus I do not consider the material to
be protected by anything, other than that you'd have to be
crazy to want to try and use it for genuine purposes (much less
disingenuous ones!) But who's to say?